Last week a co worker of mine who wanted to remain anonymous, ran into the weirdest problem. She tried to use the “find in files” option in Visual Studio 2005 and even though the searched expression was out there in one of the files, she got the following result: “No files were found to look in. Find was stopped in progress.”

You can close Visual Studio, restart your computer or jump three times on one leg, but the problem remains. This is a very strange and odd bug, but fortunately there is a solution: press Ctrl+Scroll Lock and everything gets back to normal. If it doesn’t work, try to press Scroll Lock and than hit Ctrl+Scroll Lock again. I have no idea why or how it works, but the fact is that it does solve the problem, if anyone knows what happened here, please leave your comment and share your knowledge with us.

This is one of my shortest posts ever, but it might turn out to be very useful at harsh times…

121 Responses to “How To Solve: "No Files Were Found To Look In. Find Was Stopped In Progress"”

I too have ran SMACK head first into this problem too! And the CTRL+ScrollLock works (sometimes takes one or two smack backs to get it to convince VS to work properly but it does work). Why? I have NO idea neither but would be very interested to read WTF?

tom

Said on
September 18, 2008 :

My visual studio seems to crash when i do crtl+f no reason why

Random

Said on
November 4, 2008 :

Thanks! That did the trick. Oh Microsoft, thanks for this POS.

Fer Fig

Said on
November 6, 2008 :

Thanks! solved the “problem” for me too…
This is weird one!!!

J

Said on
November 10, 2008 :

Funny, I’ve been using VS2005 for years now and never had this problem… until just a few minutes ago! Luckily a quick question to Dr. Google pointed me to the answer here (and to a couple of dozen other sites!) Curious that the “problem” has been around since at least 2005 and yet nobody has yet been able to say *why* it happens…

Control + Scroll Lock didn’t work for me this time. I think it did on prior occasions. This time, Hitting Pause 10xs in fast succession why I cursed Bill Gates loudly fixed the problem. Yes, I hold the ex CEO personally responsible for this longtime bug

Dashut’s suggestion of pause/break worked for me, the ctrl-scroll lock / scroll didn’t. Maybe this tip should be added to the article? Thanks!

Paul

Said on
March 30, 2009 :

I just encountered this for the first time this morning. Bizarre problem and an equally bizarre solution. Thanks!

Soshan

Said on
April 5, 2009 :

Ctrl + Pause Break worked for me.
Ctrl + Scroll Lock didnt!

Neo

Said on
April 9, 2009 :

Hey ctrl + Scroll aslo work for me cheers!!

Neo

Neo

Said on
April 9, 2009 :

oh I forgotut to add the ver don’t surprise itz VS 2008 That’s not good

Fitzroy

Said on
May 20, 2009 :

This problem annoyed me a lot in the past and I could never remember what I did to fix it. Your tip is the answer – thanks a lot

Sheetal

Said on
May 21, 2009 :

Thanks ….for the post !!!!

dashesy

Said on
June 2, 2009 :

thnx man it worked!!! I hate the fact that I have to use crappy Microsoft products, Eclipse is far superior with Alt+Ctrl+G.
I think the bug appeared first when I stopped a build (using ctrl+break).

EMiller

Said on
June 22, 2009 :

Very weird, but nice to have a solution!!

Jason Hodges

Said on
June 24, 2009 :

Um, HOW THE HECK did you figure that out?!!! Thanks a ton!!!

FedUpWithMS

Said on
June 24, 2009 :

VS2008 – Pause/Break multiple times worked for me, Ctrl ScrLk and the other options didn’t (this time, though they have in the past)

Goofs

Said on
June 30, 2009 :

Jeezaloo!! I got the same problem, And your site came up in Google search.
Thanks a bunch.

Ben

Said on
July 2, 2009 :

Thanks, man! I was having that bug at work on several computers for years now… I didn’t bother to post a bug report on Microsoft website because other reports I posted were closed as “can’t reproduce” (like one for which they said it was surely caused by my keyboard…)

I didnt understand what is relation with the scrolllock but it do worked for me. thanks al lot

eli

Said on
October 29, 2009 :

Thanks a lot!!!!

Fezzik

Said on
November 19, 2009 :

That worked for me in Visual Studio 2008. I wish I knew why this trick works.

Pete

Said on
November 26, 2009 :

None of the above worked for me, however… I eventually realised I’d had several instances of visual studio with different solutions open the day before, and in one of those instances I’d changed the file types setting to perform a search of specific file types within a folder.

I’d then spent the rest of that day using the other open instances of visual studio, happily searching as normal. But when I closed all the solutions at the end of the day, clearly the changed file types setting was saved for *all* solutions, and so the next morning when I opened up one of the other solutions I suddenly found every search produced the ‘No files were found to look in.’ message.

Obviously this is my fault and not a bug! But in case other people do like me and search for the error message then sit fruitlessly trying every combination of ctrl, scroll-lock and pause/break: check the file types first

crazy joe

Said on
December 2, 2009 :

Had to hit Pause/Break 17 times.

Jiti

Said on
December 2, 2009 :

Thank goodness for your post and google to lead me to it!

laol

Said on
December 4, 2009 :

Pause/Break worked for me on VC++ 2008 Express
thanks a lot

Ani

Said on
December 24, 2009 :

Cool tip – gets you back in the game!!

Arjun Dsouza

Said on
January 6, 2010 :

Surprisingly for me, I have been working on VS since 2005 and got this problem only now. Thanks for posting the solution. A very rare issue, indeed!

Darshan Kapadia

Said on
January 14, 2010 :

Thanks a lot it works

prognostic

Said on
January 26, 2010 :

Thanks!! It probably occurs by accidentally hitting either the Scroll Lock or Pause-Break. Building my project takes a while, and I wanted to stop it with a Ctrl-Pause. Either my finger slipped off the Ctrl button and I simply hit Pause, or I hit the Scroll Lock. Either way, I just hit Pause twice and Find In Files is working again!

Phani Kiran

Said on
March 10, 2010 :

I think ctrl+scroll lock is a shortcut to some feature on vs05

Garf

Said on
March 19, 2010 :

Very helpful. Thanks a lot.

ken

Said on
April 8, 2010 :

Thanks a lot! Ensured my frustration was present for only a very short while.

Jonathan Lam

Said on
April 9, 2010 :

Wow what the crap, that worked for me, in VS2008! Thanks!

Vianney L

Said on
April 15, 2010 :

I feel there is magic behind this but thx a lot.

dev123

Said on
May 6, 2010 :

Thank you!!

Still hit this problem in VS 2010 (believe it or not they still haven’t fixed this!), and Ctrl+Scroll Lock fixed it.

I believe Ctrl+Break will fix that also, but haven’t confirmed. The reasoning for that comes from when I looked up which command Ctrl+ScrollLock was mapped to (under Tools->Customize->Keyboard), and it was interpreted by VS as Ctrl+Break for some reason (which was mapped, by default, to Cancel Build.

Go figure. (I’m talking to you Microsoft… GO AND FIGURE!!! :-))

Ned Nedson

Said on
May 21, 2010 :

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

I just got a new keyboard and I wonder if that caused the problem that this “Control Scroll Lock” trick fixes.

This has been dogging me for years. Glad I found this tip. The problem seems to happen if you press and hold the break or scroll lock keys (perhaps then when you press the ctrl key). Mine get stuck under a lip of my keyboard tray so I have this problem several times a week.

I have now physically removed those keys from the keyboard so I don’t accidentally press them in Visual Studio any more.

Amer

Said on
August 23, 2010 :

thanks you very much,
ctrl + scroll lock worked for me

Antknei

Said on
August 27, 2010 :

Worked first try. Thanks.

SwDude

Said on
August 30, 2010 :

Ctrl+Scroll Lock worked for me – thanks so much for finding and publishing this fix for this strange bug.

Islamegy

Said on
September 6, 2010 :

Very wired behavior, I just wonder how did you discovered the solution??

Jt

Said on
September 17, 2010 :

VS 2008. That’s the weirdet fix ever. Used ctrl-shift F to search and while searching hit paus/break a bunch of times. Not sure if CTRL was in there. Tried a couple of times. All good now.

Dee

Said on
October 2, 2010 :

Ctrl-ScrLk didn’t work, even after multiple tries, but Pause/Break did the trick. THANK you (and Google for allowing me to find you)!

Pierre

Said on
October 5, 2010 :

Neither Ctrl-Break nor Ctrl-Scroll lock worked for me (on VS 2010). But after some googling I tried Ctrl-C + Ctrl-Break and it worked. Thanks for sharing anyway !

El Terrible

Said on
October 13, 2010 :

I was sure you guys were kidding but I banged away on ^Break and ^Pause for a few seconds and now it works…..
What the hell is this???

Tony

Said on
November 9, 2010 :

Thanks a lot, it worked at the first attempt !!

However… how did you find this solution ?

Anuj Man Bajracharya

Said on
November 15, 2010 :

And that “Ctrl + Scroll Lock” answer was amazing, it worked for me as well… Thanks man..

Pradnya

Said on
November 15, 2010 :

Thanks !!

Alex

Said on
December 30, 2010 :

Wow It works but it is definitely voodoo magic!

Gee

Said on
January 28, 2011 :

Fix for this freaky problem for me was the Pause/Break.
After it cleared it, I reproduced it by pressing Ctrl-Scroll Lock, and then toggled it back off again with Ctrl-Scroll Lock.

This page justifiably belongs on the first hit for Google “visual studios no files were found to look in” – whew thanks

Gaurav

Said on
February 24, 2011 :

This solved the problem. Could anybody ascertain why we get into this issue?

Dom

Said on
February 28, 2011 :

Got that issue in VS2010 and it works, thanks

Frank

Said on
March 3, 2011 :

Thanks!! That was exactly the problem.

Ram Megharaj

Said on
March 8, 2011 :

It worked for me. Thanks alot

Prathima Reddy

Said on
March 11, 2011 :

WOoooWW …. It worked for me too .. Thanks a lot!!!

subbu

Said on
March 17, 2011 :

Thanks for the post.. encountered it and solved it with your suggestion.. kudos…

Will

Said on
March 25, 2011 :

It did not work initally, but I hit the Pause/Break button a few times in frustration and then did the search and then it worked. I think we all had food or something stuck in the keyboard causing the break key to be pressed. Also people hitting the Scroll Lock key may loosen what was stuck on the Pause/Break key. I think it just so happen the keys are next to each other which Break stops a search process.

Ketaki

Said on
April 28, 2011 :

I tried to pause the code while it was executing by pressing Ctrl + Pause/Break. I pressed it several times just to stop the code from compiling. I think that was the reason I started having this “Find was stopped in progress” problem. Or might be I pressed Ctrl Scroll Lock by mistake while trying to do that.
But eventually Ctrl + Scroll Lock worked wonders..
Thanks a lot.

Deepak

Said on
May 6, 2011 :

Awesome….how did u find this out….?

Mahesh

Said on
May 10, 2011 :

Cheers too..

Vince P.

Said on
June 7, 2011 :

Just wanted to let you know that I’ve used your article twice in the last 6 months when VS 2010 started behaving this way. This is such a stupid defect; I can’t believe this is still there.

Has anyone figured out WHY this happens? There’s got to be a semi-interesting story behind this one.

Dude, this f@#$(& page R-O-C-K-S.
I had froze in VS 2010 and had a build going but I wanted to just close VS. Got msg, “Build in progress blah blah,” and I kept pounding on CTRL+Break, Esc cuz it is frozen tardware.

The fix that keeps on fixin. It (Ctrl-Pause/Break) worked for me in VS 2010. Thanks!

Stan

Said on
March 5, 2013 :

PauseBreak is the fix! This should be documented.

Anurag

Said on
March 18, 2013 :

Nothing solved this problem for me – restarting the computer, pressing Ctrl+Scrlk, Alt+Break, Ctrl+Scrlk numerous times while VS2005 app had the focus didn’t work either.
Finally deleting this registry key worked for me:
MyComputer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Find

Nate

Said on
April 1, 2013 :

Worked great for me. Thanks a bunch!

Stian

Said on
July 1, 2013 :

Worked perfectly in VS2012/W8. Thanks

Anonymouse

Said on
January 29, 2014 :

Still there in VS2012 but it only seems to randomly fix the issue (the current search will randomly cut off with the ‘Find was stopped in progress’ message.